by Noel Hynd
The fliers looked at the major with a lack of comprehension.
“Ah, but what the hell? You’re here now,” Major Haley said. “Do what you’ve been hired to do and try to stay alive. Make of it what you can.”
The major rose from his chair and, with a laugh, left the table, leaving the fliers to look at each other with confusion. Another incident that perplexed them followed a few nights later.
Taylor and Olson, decided to have dinner together off the Tempelhof campus. They found a restaurant that was doing business two blocks away, walked in wearing their uniforms and sat down. The place was moderately crowded and most of the diners were German.
They found a table and seated themselves, aware that the conversation level in the room had started to drop as soon as they walked in. They picked up a one-page menu that was on their table. Abruptly, two men dining at the next table put down their tableware, left money to pay, made a grand gesture of standing. Then they walked out.
Another table did the same. Then another. Many glowering, reproachful looks were thrown their way as the restaurant emptied. Within minutes, the place was empty.
Tommy Olson and Glenn Taylor exchanged a glance.
“I don’t think they like us,” Olson said with Montana understatement.
“Roger that,” Taylor said. “In fact, I’d say they hate us.”
Olson thought it through. “If we’re here to help them, why do they hate us?” she asked.
Taylor had no answer, nor did the waiter who appeared and ignored the question in favor of taking their order. “But why?” Olson asked again as they walked back to Tempelhof, still outside the secure zone within the airfield.
“It’s complicated,” Major Haley said in passing the next day when Olson posed the same question. “First we bomb ‘em, then we arrived to save them from Bolshevism. That’s a tricky one to wrap one’s head around isn’t it? Hey, you flying today?” Haley asked. The skies were turbulent with thunderstorms. Gatow was closed and half the Tempelhof runs were backed up.
“Four trips from Wiesbaden and back. My section is loading cargo now.”
“Who are you co-piloting with?”
“Taylor, sir.”
“Good, good. Keep it moving,” Haley said. “And if you know any other lady pilots back home who’d like to get in on all this fun, send ‘em a Western Union. We could use ‘em.”
Neither Olson, nor Taylor nor Marino cared for Major Haley. They weren’t unhappy or surprised when they never saw him again. General Clay didn’t like his attitude and had had him reassigned to Alaska. His duties shifted to another major, this one named Robert Pickford who had quietly arranged for the re-assignments.
Chapter 12
Cambridge, England – June 1948
Conveniently for Bill Cochrane in Cambridge, there was an active pub at each end of his block. Less conveniently, after a few weeks in the city and having explored every watering hole in the proximity of the university, both Bill and Laura settled on a favorite pub ten minutes farther afield, one named “The Hero of the Thames.”
The pub had its own quirky history. An oarsman from London had won a sculling race on the Thames before moving to Cambridge in the middle of the nineteenth century with his much younger wife who had been a model for artists in France. The rower requested all his friends’ postal items should be addressed to "The Hero of the River Thames, King Street, Cambridge.”
His friends complied.
After the man’s death, a public house – food and drink – was established at his former address. His souvenirs and oars, his trophies and clothing, plus risqué drawings of his wife never left the building. They served as décor. A century later, the pub retained its nineteenth-century interior and continued at the location where the oarsman lived.
Bill and Laura relaxed into their summer and took several local trips to see the English countryside, as well as to visit London. Cochrane became a regular at “The Hero,” especially evenings after dinner, maybe two or three times a week, for an hour or two each visit.
He fell into conversation with the locals and members of the university community, a pint or two of lager smoothing – or inciting – the conversation for all. For Bill Cochrane, it was an excellent way to get the feel of local public opinion and pick up on the latest rumors that were in the newspapers or on the BBC.
Being close to the university, the pub was a melting pot of left-wing and right-wing opinion. Taking advice from Polonius, Cochrane gave all men his ear and few men his voice. Laura knew that such activities were part of his job and gave him plenty of latitude to drink lager and listen. He frequented the bar by himself on more nights than Laura joined him. His wife was content to stay home, watch and play with their daughter, and read after their child had been put to bed.
At the pub, there was plenty to listen to. Cambridge was an epicenter of left-of-center opinion in the U.K. Cochrane was spared none of it. Nor did he wish to be. Listening and engaging in conversation with local people was an integral part of a spy’s duties, part of having his ear to the ground, even when not actually “working.”
Much of what was now discussed, amidst the fog of cigarette smoke, the clatter of glassware, the aroma of grilled sausages or shepherd’s pie, and the clank of pub glassware, was Berlin and the question of German reunification. And what better place on earth was there for people who talked too much than a pub?
The political consensus in the pub was clear: the Western Occupied Zone of Germany would become its own country, aligned with Western Europe, much as world leaders were now hinting. The Eastern Soviet-occupied Zone would become a nation to itself. But if West Germany was to become its own country, many argued, then Berlin, located more than a hundred miles from the border between zones, could no longer be the capital of the Western entity. Instead, the smaller city of Bonn, the birthplace of Beethoven, was now discussed as a potential provisional capital. During the Second World War, Bonn had been positioned strategically on the Rhine, which formed a barrier to easy assault into Westphalia from the west. But the U.S. 1st Infantry Division captured the city in early March 1945.
“Europe should be left for the Europeans,” one pub patron informed Bill Cochrane one evening when Laura was not present. “The war has been over for three years. Time for America to go home. Cheerio!”
“Unfortunately, many of us cannot ‘go home,’ as you phrased it,” Cochrane replied. “They’re buried in European soil, the soil upon which they bled and died while pushing Naziism back to where it came from.”
“Yes, very good and I knew you’d say that,” the fellow said. “But Europe does not need to be rescued. ‘Yankee, go home,’ and all that. No hard feelings, mate. Just time for you to leave.”
“Are you talking about me personally or the influence of my country?” Cochrane asked.
“Perhaps both, old sport.”
“Only to be invited back in another twenty years for the third time in this century?” Cochrane thought to respond. Thought to respond but didn’t.
The overweight, blustery, red-cheeked barman, interceded. “Billy,” he said to the patron. “Why don’t you go over to that table with your Bolshevik friends, sit down, and for God’s sake shut up?” A beat, then, “Or do I need to come around the bar, grab you by the back of your belt and the scruff of your unwashed neck, and help you find a place to land?” the barman suggested, his dark eyes narrowing.
Cochrane smirked. Business in the public houses had returned in the evenings, and men like the burly barman were again able to make a living, serving brews, pub grub, food for thought, and political arguments. But, as always, there were limits to any barman’s patience.
“Okay. I’m going,” the patron said after a moment’s reflection. “Cheers,” he said to Cochrane as he turned.
“Have a pleasant evening,” Cochrane answered. “Cheers to you, too.”
Bill and the barkeeper exchanged a look. The patron went to his suggested seat. The table was indeed filled with noisy, local lefties, one
of whom wore a cap with a red star. Bemused, Cochrane noted it briefly, then turned away and for the first time, exchanged a conversation with the barman that extended beyond an order for food or drink. “Sorry he sat down,” the barman said sotto voce to Cochrane. “Once a week I enjoy a good fight, what?”
“Don’t let me keep you from your fun,” Cochrane said.
The barman laughed and offered a hand. “I’m Edward,” he said.
“I’m Bill,” Cochrane said. They shook.
That quickly, an acquaintance took root as a new friendship. “Don’t mind me, sir,” Edward continued. “This is my bar. I can say what I like. What can I draw for you?”
“A pint of pale ale. Whichever you like.”
“I only have one, sir,” Edward said, mustering a belated smile and a sly wink. “So that one’s my preference. Brewed locally. Try one on the house.”
“I accept your generous offer, Edward.”
And so it often went.
While the political orientation of the patrons oriented from middle left to far left, a staunch alternative point of view was frequently held by Edward.
Edward was a latter-day monarchist, a loyal Tory, and supporter of his king, George VI. He had served as a junior officer in the Royal Navy during the war and was happy to remind anyone about it. He had a portrait of George and Queen Mary behind the bar. Edward kept his views under the counter with many of the patrons, but instincts told him that since Cochrane was an American, Cochrane must have agreed with him.
“Bloody Russians,” Edward said to Cochrane one evening, glancing at a headline on a copy of that day’s Telegraph that lay on the counter of the pub. “They’ll damned well take anything you give them, and they’ll try to take anything you don’t.”
Cochrane grinned. “I can’t say I disagree with you, Edward,” Cochrane said.
Increasingly in The Hero of The Thames, the subject was Berlin and the current Russian blockade of the city. It was hard to avoid, either going forward or looking at recent postwar events. If there was a potential catalyst for another world war, this was it.
Joseph Stalin was unhappy with the terms of the Yalta agreement and was happy to let the world know it.
“Stalin’s gone loco over Berlin,” muttered Edward to Cochrane one evening in June, out of the earshot of the other paying customers. There was no shortage of Stalin apologists in the place. “Well, the old commie bastard can go bugger himself, don’t you think, sir?”
“I’m inclined to agree with you, Edward,” Cochrane answered amiably but with a perfectly dry expression. “And I do as always admire your way with words.”
“Very good, sir,” the barman answered with a laugh. “Let me draw a pint for you. On the house once again.”
By this time Cochrane had taken a measure of Edward as an impulsive and warm-hearted fellow who liked having people around him. So what if he was an intellectual primitive? Cochrane had dealt with far worse before and tended to concede that the barkeeper made valid points, even when Cochrane might not fully agree with him.
Edward didn’t even realize that Cochrane had turned him into his own small source. Often Edward tipped him off as to who among his drinking companions was pink and who was flaming crimson, who worked for the university, who was on the local police force, and who was a “visiting professor” from a Soviet bloc country.
There was no shortage of economists in The Hero: Marxists, Keynesians, primitives, socialists, post-socialists, and free-market capitalists. It made for lively arguments, at least one of which ended with a Keynesian and a capitalist stepping outside and exchanging blows on a balmy night in June. Edward followed them out with a half-bucket of dirty ice water, cursed them out with some language left over from his time in military service, and cooled them down with one accurate toss of the bucket.
Then came the announcement by Soviet authorities that the autobahn, the highway connecting Western Germany to Berlin, would be closed indefinitely.
“For long-term repairs,” said an East German spokesman.
“No way in hell the East German Communists are doing this on their own, don’t you think, sir?” Edward remarked to Cochrane on the same evening. “Closing the autobahn? They wouldn’t dare!”
“Of course not,” Cochrane agreed. “Stalin is sitting in the Kremlin pulling strings. His German puppets in the Eastern Zone do exactly as instructed.”
“A lot of them are former Nazis, the East German Reds,” Edward said in a low voice. “Flipped completely after the war. Throw away Mein Kampf and line up at the bookseller for Das Capital because some new comrade is buttering the stale bread. Disgusting, don’t you think, sir?”
Cochrane responded with a nod from his usual seat at the bar, keeping an eye on the whole place via the chipped mirror behind Edward. For a moment Edward’s gaze drifted away. He surveyed his clientele in an unfocused way, as if deciding which ones he liked and which ones he might prefer to throw out the front door. Then his attention came back to Cochrane.
“Queer new world, what?” Edward asked.
“Indeed it is,” Cochrane allowed. “But it’s the only one we are left with.”
The next day, Russian labor crews, supervised by armed soldiers, also tore up most of the railroad tracks making them unusable, also for “repairs.” The same afternoon, the Soviet Union and their East German puppets officially barred all barge and rail traffic from entering West Berlin, a blockade quickly enforced by Soviet ships positioned at the mouths of the German rivers that led to the North Sea. The Rivers Havel and Spree flowed to Berlin, making the city accessible by water through a series of canals. Now the Russians had blocked that, too.
“Stalin must think that he can starve Berlin out,” Edward muttered at the end of the bar with Cochrane that same evening in June. “That must be what he’s thinking. There’s no way enough food gets to Berlin without trains and lorries and barges.”
“Quite right,” Cochrane said.
“The old commie bastard,” Edward said. “He figures keep the people hungry and angry and they’ll demand that Britain and American leave.”
“And the French as well,” Cochrane commiserated.
“No one gives a bloody damn about the worthless French,” Edward said. “When they return all the English bodies buried in Normandy after two wars, maybe I’ll feel sorrier for them. Starve everybody out, what?” he concluded in disgust.
“I’m sure Comrade Stalin has a lot of faith in starvation as a political hammer,” Cochrane answered, “since he starved to death two million Ukrainian peasants in the last two decades.”
“Very true, sir,” Edward said. There was a pause and then Edward continued. “I get the notion that you share my dislike of those Russian bastards,” he said.
“I’ll be clear, Edward,” Cochrane said. “I have nothing against Russia or its people. They sacrificed greatly during the war and the Russian people lead difficult lives. But a lot has changed since 1945 when they were our uneasy allies. Currently, I’m deeply suspicious and cynical about the intentions of their leaders. Let’s leave it at that.”
“We agree, sir,” Edward said. “It’s good to have you in here each evening. It would be lonely if you stopped coming.”
Chapter 13
Germany – Soviet Occupied Eastern Zone 1945 -1948
First Lieutenant Otto Kern from Leipzig served with the Wehrmacht Ninth Army from his enlistment in 1941 until 1945 when it was under the command of General Theodor Busse. Before the war, he had studied electricity and electrical engineering at Humboldt University in Berlin in the late 1930s. There he had met a young German woman from Berlin named Teresia. They drew close to each other from the first day they met. They were both quiet socialists who kept their views to themselves. Teresia had studied electricity, too.
They spent evenings in the rathskellers frequented by students, drinking and singing seditious songs. Some of their rowdier friends chanted workers’ slogans aloud in English, German, and Russian. All Hail The Grea
t Stalin. Alle begrüßen den großen Stalin! Vse privetstvuyut velikogo stalina! – almost daring the pro-Nazi students to come and get them. After August of 1939, there were fewer such taunts until there were none. But the memory had imprinted in Otto Kern’s brain. It would stay with him throughout the war and beyond.
Teresia and Otto married in 1940. They had a son named Hans who was born in March 1941, a week before Otto reported for active duty to fight in the East against the Bolshevism he had once mocked. He was assigned to the Wehrmacht’s Ninth Army, which eventually advanced on Moscow and dug in with heavy fighting west of the Russian capital.
In 1944, after Stalingrad and after the tide of the war had turned against Nazi Germany, General Busse’s Ninth Army engaged the Soviets moving westward toward Berlin. By now the Ninth was part of Army Group Vistula and rather than attacking the Soviet capital, they were charged with defending the German capital.
This army group was put together from elements of Army Group A, which had been shattered in the Soviet Vistula-Oder Offensive; Army Group Centre, similarly pounded in the East Prussian Offensive; and a variety of ragtag formations assigned from areas considered lost. It was formed to protect Berlin from the Soviet armies advancing from the Vistula River. More than half a million soldiers were part of Army Group Vistula. Hitler personally assigned Heinrich Himmler to command the defense of Berlin. Not surprisingly, Himmler was not particularly good at a military assignment.
Troops that the Soviets did not obliterate eventually crossed the Elbe at Tangermünde and surrendered to the United States Army. Lt. Kern was among these weary soldiers; weaponless, dazed, but somehow still staggering forward, expecting to be shot at any moment. Lt. Kern lost parts of three fingers on his left hand from battlefield injuries and suffered four other wounds to his flesh and collarbone against the Red Army.
He landed in the Bad Kreuznach location of The Rheinwiesenlager, Rhine meadow camps, a group of nineteen camps built in Allied-occupied Germany by the U.S. Army. The camps held close to two million surrendered Wehrmacht and SS personnel from April until September 1945.